MTG Salvation

Quote from cfusionpm »

Quote from ktkenshinx »

2. Modern is currently healthy in Wizards' eyes. So take a snapshot of Modern for the past few months: that's healthy. If you don't like that, you are probably out of sync with Wizards' views on format health.

WOTC things an abundance of high variance graveyard abuse is healthy. I guess it's time to sell out of the format? I have heard many people compare the past few months to how awful the GGT/Probe meta was, and I agree with them. I'm curious how many at WOTC actually play competitive Modern, instead of simply look at excel spreadsheets of deck labels and card names.

You've posted this same sentiment about every meta since the Twin ban. I honestly do not understand why you continue to play Modern when you've seemingly hated the format for the entirety of the last 3.5 years. Modern is in a healthy spot right now, with a generally self-policing meta and the ability for multiple strategies to cycle through Tier 1 status as new printings have created new decks or updated old ones.

I've also been playing Modern since before the Twin ban, and to say that the current format is anything like the GGT/Probe one is just absurd. That meta was problematic because the undisputed best decks either killed you on turn 2/3 (Infect and DS Zoo) with perfect information, or presented unbeatable inevitability that required a minimum of 4-6 sideboard cards to overcome (Dredge). The closest thing to that level of degeneracy currently seeing play is Neoform, which is still struggling to put up consistent results and is not even close to the meta share that those three decks occupied at that time.

If you knew, for certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt that Twin was never being unbanned, would you actually still be playing the format? It really just seems like you're always just hoping for a Twin unban, and literally nothing else is worth considering.

My gut says 1-2, basically replacing any main deck copies of Collective Brutality. It really is great how diverse the 2 CMC removal spot has become, between Assassin's Trophy, Abrupt Decay, Collective Brutality, and Triumph you can really round out your removal nicely.

The Shadow decks both reward and punish making a lot of correct micro-decisions that often revolve around managing your mana and life total. It's entirely possible to lose a game based entirely on having fetched the wrong land on turn 1/2, to say nothing of the balancing act that closing games out often ends up being. Because GDS plays so many cantrips, a lot of the time you have to make decisions about your mana and life total based on future possibilities and what you might draw, instead of working with all known information. Comparatively, and for BG specifically, you have far less micro-decisions to make, while still getting to enjoy some of the general gameplay of discard -> big idiot beater. This comes at the cost of the sheer aggression that Shadow can sometimes put out, and less cantrips means you're more dependent on the top of your deck and general deckbuilding to give you what you need.

As a long time Shadow player I have also occasionally switched to BG when I felt like I just needed a break from the micro-management.

To chime in on 17 vs 18 lands, I've been trying a 17 land list and have consistently run into issues hitting my third land, which it always feels like this deck needs to do. At this point I think it's better to run 18 lands and a Faithless Looting or two to mitigate flooding than to try going down to 17. In particular, I've really liked the 3/2 split of Traverse and Looting.

The Prowess Shadow list is really interesting, but I'm not sure what matchups its solving vs a more traditional Traverse list.

I'm also waffling on the third Trophy. It was originally an Ancient Grudge, but without KCI I don't know if I need the double-tap that Ancient Grudge provides. That led me to Abrade, but I'm a little unexcited about Abrade at the moment. That then led me to Abrupt Decay, which always feels like the 76th card in my deck. The last to get cut, but very often does. After thinking about what I would board it in against (creatures, GDS, Jund, U/W/x, random permanent-based nonsense), I started to consider just going with a third Trophy. It still comes in against those decks, but the range of threats Decay misses and Trophy hits is pretty significant in the matchups where I want it: Worship, Gurmag Angler, Lilianas, Jace, Teferi, and manlands. Trophy also improves my Tron matchup when on the draw, which I'm very interested in.

I love Fulminator Mage. I used to be a lot less excited about it, but years of seeing how Reid Duke uses it really changed the way I view the card. I consider 3 the minimum in straight Jund Shadow, but I can talk about why I like the full 4 right now:

• The effect a single Fulminator has in big mana matchups can set your opponent back significantly. Resolving a second one can often put them so far behind that they can't catch up before you kill them. Aside from that, you need to be interacting with their lands or you will just eventually lose to whatever giant win condition they have. The fact that Fulminator is just as effective against Scapeshift as it is Tron as it is Amulet Titan means that the card just covers a lot of matchups.
• I heavily rely on Fulminator to execute my post-board plan against U/W/x. In an ideal world, you curve discard into multiple Tarmogoyfs and just overwhelm them. Realistically, you hit them with some discard, play a Goyf, maybe get a hit or two in before it gets answered, then rinse/repeat. Fulminator factors into that at the simplest level by just being another creature, but a single Fulminator on the battlefield can put strain on all of their win conditions. It straight-up answers Colonnade and a flipped Azcanta, and it makes it more suspect for them to tap out for a planeswalker. That's a lot of equity to get from a single card, and Fulminator only gets better in multiples. Additionally, because you can sac it in response to removal, it helps guarantee that you'll have something to get back with K-Command or Liliana, the Last Hope. All of this means that I'm happy to draw any and all Fulminator Mages in my deck, which means I can take advantage of the full 4. I tend to side out Street Wraiths in some number against both decks, so Fulminator also helps maintain a creature in the graveyard for delirium, with the caveat that it's always turn 3 or later. I board in the full 4 here.
• I think it's great against traditional Jund. In addition to checking manlands, it makes opposing Liliana of the Veil (one of the most important cards in the matchup) worse, and you can sometimes just make it much harder for them to resolve their 4+ CMC cards. It's also possible to knock them off of red mana for a bit, which can let you build up enough of a board to overwhelm them when they finally draw out of it. I also board in the full 4 here.
• I think it's okay against GDS. There are some games where stone raining them is such a blow to their development that they just don't recover in time. There are some games where you draw it when they have a ton of lands in play, and it's just a chump blocker. I've also had games where I keep targeting their red mana and force them to continually fetch/shock, and then they've struggled to cast cards like Dismember. I'm honestly still learning how to use it in the matchup, but I've enjoyed having access to a few copies so far. Like I said above, I only board in 2-3 here.
• Land destruction is hilarious against 4c Shadow for obvious reasons. I haven't played against it with my list, but I would board in the full 4 here.
• Much like GDS, it's fine in the Jund Shadow mirror at 2-3 copies.
• I've started bringing it in against Burn because I want to be able to cut all of my Street Wraiths and Thoughtseizes, and because the hands where they only have 1-2 lands and the rest burn spells are the hardest ones to beat. The last time I played this I brought in the full 4, but I'm not sure if that holds true with my current version.

I lose more matchups against GDS, Jund, and U/W/x because of not being able to play my cards on time than for any other single reason, so I've gotten into the habit of using my first Traverse very aggressively for lands if I think I won't make my third land drop. I think that this is a distinct advantage against GDS, where some hands can struggle to make their first 3 land drops in a timely manner.

I have a hard time calling 3 EE anything other than poor deck building, especially in this deck. GDS runs it because they have no other way to interact with enchantments, I don't really think it solves problems for JDS.

I've actually felt the loss of Ghor-Clan Rampager a bit, and have considered a 3rd TBR in the sideboard. It's all just meta dependent, though. Not a fan of CB in the main at all.

Nice finish, was the Naya Zoo list a big zoo or little zoo one? I haven't played against either with Jund Shadow, so I'm just curious to hear how the games played out. I think those are reasonable changes to make, although I'll be honest that I haven't felt like I needed Lavamancer in this build. If Humans comes back I could see that changing, though.

As far as your GDS question, that's not a way to sideboard that I've explored, but it's an interesting angle. I think the bigger issue is that it seems like cutting Mishra's Bauble is an attempt to improve your top-decks in the late game, but that's completely at odds with keeping Battle Rages in. I'm pretty sure my lists punish that kind of sideboard strategy very hard, because they have access to so much removal.

I've actually started boarding in Fulminators against GDS because of how much they can stumble on mana. With that particular list, I boarded like this:
-2 Temur Battle Rage
-2 Street Wraith
-2 Inquisition of Kozilek

+2 Assassin's Trophy
+2 Liliana, the Last Hope
+2 Fulminator Mage

I think that on the play, you could also argue for cutting a third Street Wraith for a 3rd Fulminator, which I believe I did in the second IQ I top 8ed.

I'm not sure if I would have double blocked there, did you have any other cards in hand?

This is the list I'm looking to test moving forward:


No big changes, just some minor tweaks and moving things between the main/side boards. I'm really unexcited about playing the 3rd Brutality, but Burn seems to do well against Izzet Phoenix so I don't want to be unprepared. At the same time, I don't really need a third Brutality in any other matchups, so I'm considering something like Duress instead, which is a bit worse against Burn but more generally useful than the third Brutality. I'm also wondering if I should give Scavenging Ooze another shot.

The deck just does exactly what I want to do in Modern, it's playing a Jund game that doesn't flood out and just aims to disrupt and kill your opponent as fast as possible. I honestly haven't felt this in-sync with my deck since I was playing Jund before the Twin ban.

It's funny, because when I first switched to Grixis from 5-Color (before Grixis adopted Baubles) I felt exactly the opposite, that Grixis was so much easier to play because there were less micro-decisions that could come back to haunt me. That scale has definitely shifted now, and I find the Jund version much easier to pilot.

I have pretty differing sideboard philosophies for Jund vs 4C. With 4C, when going to sideboard I primarily think about how I want to interact with my opponent, since I can interact with them/their stuff in every way possible. I think that finding the right balance of discard, countermagic, removal, land hate, and graveyard hate post-board across all of your matchups is the biggest learning curve that 4C has. In general, I felt like when I had a well-built sideboard and knew how much of each kind of interaction I wanted (and didn't lose to my mana base) my winrate against more linear decks was very high.

I'm still learning how to sideboard with Jund Shadow, but in general I think of the deck as having two complimentary halves. There's the "Jund" half, with Inquisition, Tarmogoyf, Liliana of the Veil, and all of the removal. Then there's the "Shadow" half, with Thoughtseize, Death's Shadow, and Street Wraith. In general, I find that I like to lean on the Jund half for fair matchups (Izzet Phoenix, U/W/x, B/G/x, Shadow mirrors, Burn, and most creature decks), and the Shadow half for unfair matchups (KCI, Tron, Dredge, Hollow One). Independent of either strategy are cards like Traverse the Ulvenwald and Mishra's Bauble, which are just cogs in the machine that make it easier to execute either strategy and find the correct threat for the matchup.

The flexibility to transition up and down the agro/control -> midrange scale is a commonly praised hallmark of Grixis Shadow, and while I think it's not possible for 4 color to effectively do the same thing, Jund Shadow is very much able to move up and down that scale, as well. That flexibility is the core of why I think both 3 color versions are superior to the 4 color one. I think that the decks do it differently, though, with Grixis more dependent on using its sideboard to move up and down the scale, while Jund Shadow is less dependent on its sideboard (and less helped by it) and more dependent on adjusting the way you're actually playing in-game. I typically play to the Jund half by being more conservative with my life total and boarding out a couple of Street Wraiths. I will often fetch basics early on against U/R decks like Blue Moon and Izzet Phoenix, because if you don't give them the chance to burn you out its actually pretty hard for them to win because they do such a poor job of killing your creatures. In these matchups, I treat Death's Shadow as more of an insurance policy to guarantee that my opponent won't be able to out-race me, and don't worry too much about powering them out early.

I've actually been thinking about recording a deck tech and a couple leagues and putting them up on Youtube, because I don't see anyone else talking about this deck the way I think of it.

First things first:


After Peter Hollman won his SCG Open on 4-Color Shadow, I was interested in giving the archetype another try after spending most of this year on Grixis. I've historically had better results on Traverse than Grixis, but with Grixis being the accepted "better" deck that just seemed like the one you were supposed to play. Returning to Traverse reminded me of a few things I'd somewhat forgotten:
- Tarmogoyf is a great Magic card
- Consistently deploying a threat on turn 2 is a big deal in a lot of matchups
- The Jund removal suite is still amazing
- The 4-Color mana base is a huge liability over a 3 color one

I hate losing games of Magic because I can't cast my spells. The inconsistency of the 5-Color Traverse manabase was the reason I originally switched to Grixis, and while the 4 color manabase is more consistent than 5 color, you will still lose some number of games because you either drew the wrong spells to go with your lands, you had to take too much damage getting all of your colors online, or your lands produced a combination of mana that's too restrictive on your given hand. These are issues that the 3 color versions of the deck very rarely encounter, and the power level of all of the Shadow decks is so high that just being able to cast your spells when you want to is going to win a lot of games. For that reason, I wanted to explore just how necessary Stubborn Denial is, and determine if just straight Jund would be a viable alternative to Grixis.

My testing on MTGO showed that I was definitely making some matchups more difficult by not running Stub, namely Burn and Jeskai. However, the matches I lost to both decks were in part to mistakes made in sideboarding (forgetting to bring in Abrade against Burn in case of Ensnaring Bridge), or partially due to play error. While I think both decks aren't great matchups, I think that they're still winnable and you have several avenues to victory in both of them. Aside from that, I felt like my matchups against land-based decks (Tron, Valakut, Amulet) got substantially better because I had 5 ways to interact with their lands, and 3 Surgicals to seal the game from there. Running more Liliana of the Veil made my fair matchups a bit better, and having consistent access to my colors and an improved removal suite made my creature-based matchups better.

I arrived at the above list after a few iterations on the sideboard, and while it's mostly stock I did take a few liberties:
- No Dismember, 2 Terminate - I like Dismember in Grixis because they need to cast multiple spells a turn and the difference between 1 and 2 mana in that deck is enormous. However, Traverse (4 color and Jund) tends to only play 1 or 2 spells a turn because it doesn't play many cantrips, so I think you can afford to spend an extra mana to upgrade to the ability to kill anything through regeneration. This is a tougher sell in 4 color because of Terminate's mana requirements, so this feels like a real draw to Jund.
- 3 Liliana of the Veil - The way people rag on her sometimes, you'd wonder why we even play her. I think LotV is incredible in this deck because of the way Jund Shadow likes to exchange resources. While she usually isn't the MVP against Spirits or Tron, she's an important role player and there are still multiple decks that struggle a lot to deal with a resolved Liliana. In particular, she swings the Grixis Shadow matchup by a huge margin if she resolves. The store the tournament was at is my LGS, and knowing that people usually play fair decks at the IQs I felt confident that I'd want 3.
- No Anger of the Gods, 1 Languish - The short answer is, you just don't need it. My build has access to such an absurd amount of single-target removal, I would often find myself casting my Angers to answer a single threat anyway. Given that, I felt that I could go down to only 1 sweeper, and since I have 3 Surgicals I felt like it didn't need to be an Anger. I think the logic behind Languish in this deck is pretty reasonable, and it's exactly the kind of card I like as a 1-of in my sideboard.

The Tournament

So all in all, the Jund version of the deck didn't seem strictly worse than 4-Color, and I took the above list to play yesterday. It was a pretty light turnout of 32 people, which was good for 5 rounds.

Round 1- Hardened Scales (2-0, 1-0 overall)
I think Hardened Scales is slightly in our favor, the same way traditional Affinity was slightly in Jund's. They have hands that can just invalidate your ability to interact, but for the most part you can kill the things that matter and attack past the remains. My strategy in this matchup is exactly that, focusing my discard and removal on their creatures, establishing a threat, and just tempoing them out of the game because they can't profitably block. This was what I did to win game 1. Hardened Scales itself can sometimes be a liability for them, as drawing too many can leave them too threat-light to actual take advantage of the payoff. My opponent ran into that issue in game 2, where he had 3 Hardened Scales in play but was drawing creatures so in-frequently that I was able to answer all of them. Unfortunately, I could answer everything because I was drawing nothing but removal, and on turn 5 I resolved Ghor-Clan Rampager and finally got my clock on. Rampager would end up dealing all 20 points of damage to my opponent, though I would eventually draw other threats that my opponent was just forced to chump block.

Sideboard
-3 Liliana of the Veil
-2 Street Wraith

+2 Abrade
+2 Assassin's Trophy
+1 Languish

Your main deck already does pretty much everything you want to be doing in this matchup, so I just like to cut Liliana and make myself a little less vulnerable to Walking Ballista.

Intermission - At this point I walked around to see what everyone was playing, and I didn't see a single person on KCI, Spirits, or Humans. Instead, every other seat had somebody playing Jeskai or Jund. While I expected a more fair meta, the end result was even more extreme than I anticipated, and I found myself wondering if I should have played a Choke instead of the second Liliana, the Last Hope after all. At this point, I also noticed another person on Death's Shadow with 4 colors and some very pretty foils, and after his match finished up I got to meet Spsiegel1987 in person for the first time, which was cool. The world's a real small place.

Round 2 - Storm (2-0, 2-0 overall)
While not as decisive a matchup as Grixis Shadow vs Storm, Storm is nevertheless a matchup I'm happy to see. There's really not even much to say because both games played out exactly the way they're supposed to, with me stripping his hand and then beating down with a big idiot. Liliana was key in both games, and I think that without Stubborn Denial you really have to be careful how many you cut because of matchups like this one.

Sideboard
-1 Kolaghan's Command
-2 Terminate
-1 Fatal Push
-1 Street Wraith
-1 Liliana of the Veil

+2 Collective Brutality
+1 Languish
+3 Surgical Extraction

The above is what I did on the draw, on the play I would remove a second Street Wraith and leave in the third Liliana. On the draw though, tapping out for her can sometimes be risky.

Round 3 - Blue Moon (2-1, 3-0 overall)
Historically, the U/R color pair in Modern has had difficultly dealing with Tarmogoyf. My strategy in this matchup is actually to play very conservatively with my life total and leverage the power of Tarmogoyf to push damage through. I like to go really long against Blue Moon because their answers line up so poorly with your threats, while you can discard their Jace's and force them to attempt the very difficult dance of burning you out without getting punished by Death's Shadow. You can't go that long if you shock yourself too much, so I actually fetch a lot of tapped shock lands in this matchup, I ended game 2 at 14 life and Game 3 at 11.

Going into this round, I knew my opponent was on a U/R deck that included Crackling Drake, so naturally I put him on Izzet Phoenix. I was able to leverage discard into multiple Death's Shadows early on, but ended up being too aggressive with my life total in turns 1/2 (before I realized he was on Moon and not Phoenix), and ended up giving him a window to burn me out, which he gladly took. Games 2 and 3 both played out the same way, with me fetching early Swamp and Forest and curving discard into Tarmogoyfs while keeping my life total high. I think I cast a single Death's Shadow in both sideboarded games. I was also able to land Lilianas in both games, which is another historically difficult card for U/R to deal with. Overall, the half of your deck that you share with traditional Jund does all of the heavy lifting in this matchup, so there's really no need to take the deal that Death's Shadow offers.

Sideboard
-2 Street Wraith
-1 Fatal Push
-1 Kolaghan's Command
+2 Assassin's Trophy
+2 Collective Brutality

I like trimming a bit on my removal, but I knew my opponent was on Crackling Drake and also thought it would be reasonable for them to bring in Thing in the Ice, so I didn't go too nuts. That read turned out to be correct, and for game 3 I brought the third Fatal Push back in and took out the second Brutality. I don't think K-Command really does anything, since it doesn't kill their creatures and they don't kill yours, and I like making myself a little harder to burn out.

Intermission - Pairings go up and I'm the first seed, with 2 other people at 3-0, and one person with 7 points. So if I get paired against the other 3-0 I'm very likely to be able to double draw into top 8, but one of us is going to get paired down.

Round 4- G Tron (2-0, 4-0 overall)
I got paired down. Fortunately, Tron is one of the decks that my build just steamrolls if I don't get punked out by a turn 3 Wurmcoil. I honestly don't remember a ton about this match because my other match against Tron in top 8 was so much more memorable. I did keep an interesting hand in game 2 of Inquisition, Tarmogoyf, Battle Rage, 2 Street Wraith, 2 fetchlands. My reasoning was that I had all of the aggression I could want, and if Street Wraith found any sort of relevant interaction I had a very good shot at winning, and if it found another threat then I could guarantee a turn 4 kill. I almost got punished by a turn 3 Karn, but one of those Wraiths found me a Thoughtseize on my turn 2 and I was able to close from there.

Sideboard
-3 Fatal Push
-1 Kolaghan's Command
-2 Terminate
-3 Liliana of the Veil
-1 Ghor-Clan Rampager

+2 Abrade
+2 Assassin's Trophy
+3 Fulminator Mage
+3 Surgical Extraction

It always feels good to board in 2/3 of your sideboard. My plan is to interact with my opponent's lands while Tarmogoyf invites them to sign the match slip, so everything that doesn't further that comes out.

Round 5 - U/W Control (ID, 4-0-1 overall)
I could not draw this match fast enough. I strongly believe that U/W and Jeskai are the worst matchups for this deck, so I was happy to avoid playing the matchup yet and hope that he ended up on the other side of the top 8 bracket. I grabbed a much needed power nap in my car while waiting for the round to finish.

Intermission - I'm first seed going into top 8 playing a deck with 8 discard spells. Today will be my day!

Quarterfinals - Tron (2-0, 5-0-1 overall)
The same opponent I faced in round 4, he was able to just barely squeak into top 8. Game 1 we both end up mulliganing to 5, but oh boy what a 5 I had - Death's Shadow, Death's Shadow, Thoughtseize, fetchland, Overgrown Tomb. My scry shows a Street Wraith, and I'm starting to think this deck might be good. Combining the above with a Tarfire to my face puts my opponent to 6 on my turn 3, and we go to game 2. Unfortunately, my opponent mulligans to 5 and I keep the nuts on 7, with 2 fetchlands, Shadow, Surgical, Fulminator, Assassin's Trophy, and Thoughtseize. My cards do what they do and my opponent never really gets a chance, but does put up a great fight for a mull to 5. The reason I have so many cards for this matchup is because even when it mulligans, it will still beat you if you fail to interact with it enough. Also notable from this game was my opponent boarding in Surgical Extraction as a way to counter my Surgicals, which he did do. While it didn't save him in that game, it was something I hadn't previously considered, and might make me reconsider waiting until my opponent's draw step to Surgical a Tron piece unless I know that the coast is clear.

Sideboard
Same as before.

Semifinals - Jeskai Control (1-2, 5-1-1 overall)
Ah crap. I think that Jeskai is the single hardest matchup for Jund Shadow, slightly edging out U/W because of their ability to burn you out. Against U/W, you can buy a lot of time by interacting with their threats via discard, Fulminator Mage, and Assassin's Trophy, and they really can't do a ton to punish you for going too low on life. However, they'll pretty much always have more threats than you have answers, so eventually something will usually stick and end the game in their favor. Jeskai can also do this, but they have the added option of burning you out. We can't interact on the stack, so this gives them some very real inevitability, especially in game 1. This is largely how my game 1 plays out, with me drawing few creatures but managing to get a Liliana into play. She starts ticking up, and my opponent lands a Teferi. Both planeswalkers stayed in play for something like 7 turns, with Teferi -3ing multiple times while my opponent tries to stave off a Liliana ult with burn. This is another area where Jeskai is harder than U/W, because U/W has very few answers to a resolved planeswalker in game 1. Eventually, my opponent is able to pull ahead with Teferi and Hieroglyphic Illumination, and I concede. Game 2 was the idiot parade, and steady stream of Tarmogoyfs had my opponent dead very quickly. Game 3 I was able to come out of the gate swinging with discard into Tarmogoyf while my opponent was dealing with mana problems. However, my opponent was able to answer the Goyf and I ended up flooding pretty badly, which gave him time to fix his mana and find a Geist of St. Traft, which then closed the game.

Sideboard
-2 Street Wraith
-3 Fatal Push
-2 Temur Battle Rage
+2 Assassin's Trophy
+3 Fulminator Mage
+2 Liliana, the Last Hope

I actually think I boarded incorrectly here. In addition to the above, I heavily weighed cutting my 2 Tarfires for 2 Collective Brutality. I decided not to because Tarfire can clean up a Jace or Teferi that's had to immediately minus, but I think this is incorrect. I think that being able to strip their answers and have an extra tool in balancing my life total is worth more than being able to answer a more specific scenario in the matchup. In the future I'll also look to -2 Tarfire and +2 Collective Brutality.

Overall I had a lot of fun, the deck was straight fire. I felt extremely in control of all of my matchups except for Jeskai, which, while one of the deck's worst matchups, is still very winnable. The only matchup where I might have been happy to have Stubborn Denial was Jeskai, and even then I think that I would turn to something like Choke first.

Jund vs Grixis vs 4-Color
At this point, I think that Jund and Grixis are both great choices, and I would not play 4 color. My reasoning comes down to consistency, both in playstyle and in execution.

Jund Shadow plays like an extreme version of traditional Jund, and can win games by trading resources 1-for-1 to get into a top deck war because your individual cards either answer theirs or are more powerful. Jund Shadow's creatures are enormous (my Tarmogoyfs yesterday routinely had 5 or 6 power), and will typically outmuscle anything else on the battlefield. This all enables Jund Shadow to play a midrange game that is both highly proactive and interactive, and at the same level of mana efficiency as the top linear decks of the format.

If Jund Shadow is the version of the deck that put all of its points into Strength, Grixis is the one that put them all into Dexterity. While Jund Shadow generally just bulldozes its way through games, Grixis takes a more refined approach with even higher mana efficiency and the ability to interact in the only way Jund Shadow can't, the stack. This allows it to play a more tempo-oriented game, with early discard spells clearing the way to resolve a key threat. They'll then typically ride this single threat to victory, using a combination of discard, removal, and countermagic to prevent the opponent from mounting a counterattack. This flexibility comes at a cost though, and while Grixis is better at protecting its threats than Jund, it's worse at consistently finding and deploying them.

I'm sure you're all aware of all of this, but the reason I'm spelling it out here is to highlight that these decks do have somewhat different plans, even if a lot of the cards are the same. These different plans inform the subtle differences in how you play both decks, and in some of the card choices. The 4-Color version of the deck tries to allow for both, and offers the ability to both out-muscle and out-tempo your opponent with the best cards the archetype has to offer. However, this flexibility comes at the cost of consistency. The 4th color isn't free in a deck running 18 lands, and having to decide which of your colors you're just not going to have access to for the foreseeable future is a common enough occurrence. Additionally, the deck plays cards that serve very conflicting gameplans. Liliana of the Veil typically does not pair well with countermagic, and Tarmogoyf costing 2 mana can sometimes mean you won't be able to hold up a Stubborn Denial to protect it. Additionally, Tarmogoyf isn't always guaranteed to turn on Stubborn Denial. I think that the power level and efficiency of both 3-color versions of the deck is so high that your best chance at winning is to just embrace what your deck wants to do. I don't think the addition of Stubborn Denial wins enough games to offset the fail rate that it introduces to the deck.

I ended up getting 3rd, losing to Jeskai in the semis. I’ll do a longer post about it at some point tomorrow, but this deck still has some serious teeth.

I think that Burning Inquiry is the single most frustrating card to play against in Modern. I'll take Blood Moon, Ensnaring Bridge, or Chalice any day over how rage-inducing Inquiry can be sometimes.

Quote from Colt47 »

What does the mulligan fix, and why is it better than the old way?

Because people hate, hate, hate mana screw. It's possibly the single most disliked thing about Magic. And they especially hate getting mana screwed so hard they have to mulligan down to 5 or less and effectively lose the game before it's begun. It's why susbsequent TCGs have either eliminated the possibility of mana screw entirely (e.g. Hearthstone) or at least made it dramatically harder to occur (Pokemon TCG). I saw Richard Garfield say in a lecture he was giving that he regrets the way the mana system created mana screw.

Not only is it not fun to be the player, it's not particularly fun to watch someone on coverage lose a game due to having to mulligan repeatedly.

Unfortunately, the mana system is so engrained in the game you can't truly fix mana screw. Ideas like giving people guaranteed lands don't work because unlike Hearthstone, the game's balance is based around not being guaranteed to make all your land drops. But they can at least try to make it feel less punishing and not "well, I lost the game before my turn even started", which this mulligan rule is trying to do.

Yes, take the censors off and let the forum end its days in glorious chaos! More blood for the blood gods!

Quote from cfusionpm »

Quote from ktkenshinx »

Blue doesn't need more help. I know that folks like CFP will point out that URx is doing much worse than UWx, but that's not a plausible indictment of blue's viability. That's just a complaint about a specific pairing.

Remember when diversity of blue reactive decks used to matter? And how a deck was banned over such a view? I guess that doesn't matter anymore right? Just "shut up, take UW and like it"?

I think you'll enjoy the format more if you move past the Twin ban. I've already agreed it didn't meet its stated goals on diversity and merely reshuffled blue diversity at a GP/PT/MC level. The failure of the Twin ban to accomplish this goal does not indict the format as heavily as you often frame it. If you want to play a top-tier blue deck that is viable at the GP level, you can do so with GDS, Phoenix, UW Control, or Storm. Each of these decks will fulfill different Ux experiences. If you want to play a blue deck that is viable at more local levels, as I can't imagine you play exclusively GP, there are many more options out there.

Quote from AUTUMNTWILIGHT »

I find your defense abstract would you like to actually defend specific points. For instance, their justification for no counterspell in their own stream? This criticism isn't coming out of a vacuum. I mean I don't think you actually personally believe counterspell is too good for Modern so I be surprised if you want to die on this hill.

Counterspell is totally fine in Modern. Wizards' omission of Counterspell from MH does not mean it isn't appropriate in Modern. It also does not mean Wizards isn't listening to player feedback. I did not reply to a post you made about Counterspell. I replied to a post you made in which you expressed your beliefs that "I honestly don't think they care and wanna fix things", "If they actually cared it wouldnt be that hard to do a decent job," and other suggestions about a perception of Wizards' incompetence.

I have no issue with people criticizing the specific exclusion of a card from the set. It's a narrow criticism, but it's understandable as long as you are in dialogue with Wizards' actual cited reasons for doing so. I have a big issue with the wild extrapolation of "It sucks that Counterspell isn't in MH" to "Wizards doesn't listen to feedback, doesn't care, doesn't want to fix things, and is willfully or negligently doing a bad job." Those kinds of allegations have a very high bar and are simply not supportable given how much visible outreach (to say nothing of the invisible outreach) they do.

Quote from Joban8 »

You'd think that the same people who allegedly monitor format health would have an expert understanding of the modern infrastructure and which existing cards would be most efficacious when it comes to filling in gaps, balancing the color pie, bolstering lower tier archetypes, etc were they ever reprinted into modern. Instead of utilizing those existing cards, which have concrete data, and opting to make MH a majority compilation of brand new unknown variables is a sign of either ignorance or ineptitude, in my eyes. I won't damn the set until everything is laid out on the table, but I'm going to have some serious trust issues come June 14 if all we have is a set with sweet EDH toys and one solid land cycle.

Quote from cfusionpm »

I have literally been saying this for years, and constantly mocked for it. But time and time again, they show that their understanding of the format is embarrassingly thin and almost entirely dictated by spreadsheets and data sets of names. There is no deep and fundamental understanding of the actual format meta or how the decks interact with each other, outside of the absolute most basic, surface level observations. Is this set what it finally takes for others to see that?

It's very easy for players to criticize Wizards' understanding of the format if we focus on misses without context. I prefer to look at the big picture since 2016. The most telling example of this is banlist management. Every few months since Eldrazi Winter, vocal subsets of the player community have clamored for bans. Pros have joined in (LSV and GDS is an infamous example). SCG casters regularly talk about bans and format health at every single event. I stopped counting the number of times authors tangentially mention bans in articles or Tweets, and I have seen literally dozens of ban suggestions made by players, authors, commentators, pros, observers, and other community members. These have included Tron lands, Mox Opal, GDS, Cavern, E-Temple, Company, SSG, Teferi, Baral, Manamorphose, Moon, Bridge, Hierarch, Stirrings, Looting, Inquiry, and many more. It's a widely established meme at this point. But throughout all of this, Wizards has ignored most outcry and only banned three cards: Probe (a card so broken it is banned in every non-Standard format), GGT (a surgical nerf to a still viable, top-tier deck), and KCI (a demonstrably broken deck by objective, predictable measures).

I argue this conservatism is because Wizards has a much deeper and broader understanding of format dynamics than most players who get caught up in the day to day grinding and comment mill. Wizards understands that barring extreme situations, the format arcs towards diversity and two dozen viable decks of all archetypes and colors. Bans aren't necessary. Targeted shakeups aren't necessary. Basically every new Standard set has trickled format-defining cards into Modern and Wizards knows this will continue to happen. Wizards also understands that this broad viability is central to Modern's widespread appeal, even if individual players from enfranchised, knowledgeable, and experienced cohorts disagree or dislike the format. Not all players will like this. Notably, players who prefer the powerful cantrips and countermagic of Legacy will probably not like this and will describe this format as high variance and low skill, even though I have disproven this claim more times than I can count with analyses of player/pro MWPs across formats.

Unfortunately, because Wizards does not support Legacy to the same extent as Modern, all players who prefer non-rotating formats generally are funneled into Modern specifically. This means that players who would probably prefer a Legacy environment can't really enjoy it. Standard and EDH players don't have this issue; they can just stick with the formats they want to play, especially with Arena offering such a great Standard experience. But because Modern is a top-down response to the problems of the Reserve List, it is the de facto nonrotating format of Magic and that will never appeal to all the players who could theoretically enjoy nonrotating Magic. This means there will always be critics, especially vocal, enfranchised, and experienced players who want a defined metagame, a 50/50+ deck, a specific type of strong interaction/selection, etc. Wizards just understands they can't please everyone and instead chooses to promote a format where two dozen decks can T8 a GP, and they understand this is possible with hands-off management.

Quote from AUTUMNTWILIGHT »

Honestly what makes it disgraceful is that it aint hard for WOTC if they care about this stuff to sign up to some Forums like this, Cruise multiple Reddit for Magic and sit in Discords. This isn't the 90s or early 00s. If they actually cared it wouldnt be that hard to do a decent job. If they wanted to do some research and find out what people think about various decks it be easy. But I honestly don't think they care and wanna fix things.

Again, these kinds of criticisms are likely not grounded in reality. Wizards has visible representatives on Reddit and Twitter. They repost articles on the mothership from dozens of websites. A prominent R&D member is a mod alum of this website. It is implausible that they do not know about the feedback. They simply did not process the feedback how you and others might have preferred. It's frustratingly common to see people, both online and in person, criticizing large organizations for decisions with thousands of moving parts. They are obviously listening and engaging the community. It takes just a cursory look at even the last B&R announcement, where they explicitly mentioned Modern concerns, to realize this.

Control has been mainboarding Negate for years now. Almost all the creature decks run some combination of Cavern of Souls/Aether Vial/Collected Company. Against creature decks, if your counterspells can counter creatures, there's a very big chance you side them out regardless.

Quote from cfusionpm »

Relevant things Force of Negation doesn't deal with:

• Hardcast Primeval Titan
• Dredging from natural draws
• Cast triggers for Phoenix
• Cast triggers to flip Thing
• Any creature put in with Vial
• Any creature with haste
• Any creature with relevant ETB/Cast triggers
• Flurry of small spells
• Spells cast on your own turn/upkeep/combat/end step, etc

What ungodly all-encompassing magic card are you comparing Force of Negation to now that can stop all of that? Cause I need like 4 playsets

On the one hand, I hear the potential objections about the new decklist rule reducing the element of surprise and rogue deck factor. Spicy tech can become less effective if opponents start playing around it (although that too can become an advantage; see the infamous Quench factor in Ravnica limited). It's also a real skill to identify an opposing deck over the first 1-3 turns, which definitely favors Modern specialists who are able to pull small edges such as fetching for a basic in the face of a potential Blood Moon, keeping mana up for a combo deck lying in wait, or going all-in on an attack or line believing your opponent has few outs. Similarly, it's an important skill to mulligan/keep hands that are good against the average field.

On the other hand, I can't imagine that all of those edges collectively lead to more MWP gained or lost for interactive players than the sheer frustration and decisiveness of keeping bad interactive hands against decks where the interaction lines up poorly. This thread has certainly lamented this fact endlessly for years. I remember I posted some Twitter meme, maybe a Turtenwald post, about playing control decks and praying that your narrow answers line up against whatever random crap the opponent was doing; that definitely resonated with at least a few jaded control mages in this thread. This kind of rule reduces non-games due to bad openers and mismatched answers, the net impact of which will likely far exceed the net loss of the rogue factor and deck identification. This is especially true when the rogue factor tends to favor linear, non-interactive decks that play bizarre threats which aren't readily identified or answered.

For instance, imagine opponent leads T1 Seachrome Coast into SV, going top/bottom. You're on UW Control on the draw. You have the option of going T1 Hallowed Fountain --> SV or T1 Fountain and hold mana for Path. What do you do? You're probably playing against Ad Nausaem or Cheeri0s or some weird As Foretold brew in my experience, and the SV line is an almost guaranteed auto-lose against Cheeri0s, whereas the Path line is a free turn lost to Ad Nauseam. But if you know your opponent's decklist, now you can make an informed decision and we can play a game of Magic, not a game Guess Who where you have only one guess. You're 80%+ to be right if you guess Ad Nauseam, because it's way more common, but if you guess wrong you just lose flat out. That's not a fulfilling game experience by any measure, and it's the kind of non-game that interactive players loathe. We can think of similar examples when trying to evaluate a Storm vs. Izzet Phoenix start and deciding what to hold up and play around.

Overall, if you're playing predominantly linear decks where an opponent's lines don't really matter, this rule disadvantages your deck and strategy. But if you're playing an interactive deck where you need to line up answers and gameplan against an opposing deck in a varied field, it's a huge advantage. Given that many of Modern's chief complaints focus on non-games, ships passing in the night, weak interactive decks, excessive diversity that is hard to metagame against, etc., this should be an overall boon for the format.

Quote from cfusionpm »

Quote from pinkmex »

that's boring as ****; the game is rotative, just let it be, the seasons change and so do the decks.

Many people spent thousands of dollars to get into modern specifically to avoid rotation.

Yeah well those people are basing their entry into modern on a grave misunderstanding. I feel for them, but the disappointed whining that ensues when the format inevitably cycles through new and different popular strategies over weeks and months and their tuned deck from six months ago is no longer competitive, well that whining is just empty boring misdirected nonsense.

Oh and fwiw I voted that modern is currently the best it's ever been. Why? Because we've got more cards now than ever, more decks are viable now than ever, each standard set has brought more toys to the table and just as we're seeing now, modern isn't so degenerate that brand new decks can't have their day in the sun alongside old favourites. Phoenix decks doing well right now is a parallel circumstance to death's shadow having a similar boom over a year ago, and the fact that it can happen is the sign of a great format. In a couple of months it'll cycle out of popularity again and something else will fill the spot.

I guess we can sit and wait for all the phoenix players, new to modern who will say the sky is falling and preach the death of modern when those phoenix decks fall out of popularity and something else (that they inevitably dislike) takes its place. Oh and of course all the players seeing a deck gain some success and immediately saying BAN IT ARGHHG like there's a problem will just complain loudly about the next deck thst has a moment of popularity. C'est la vie

Beneath all this surface-level whining, modern is the same changeable beast that it's been since 2012. Nothing fundamental about the balance and structure of Modern has altered and that's why Modern now is the best it's ever been. It's broadly the same but it's bigger, with more options. It's still a roiling pot of endless ideas, with a handful floating to the top for a while, in a rotation of popularity and metagame viability that operates on a timescale loosely similar to the release of standard sets. (we see a shake up of the best decks in modern almost every standard set without fail, it's fun to track back and see how closely it correlates, another interesting tidbit for those people who incorrectly claim that newer sets don't affect modern!)

Sure, I can't take the same 75 card conoetitive modern deck I built a year ago and hope to do well at a competitive event now. My jund deck isn't what it used to be either. But that should be a given! That's a *good thing*. It's not a sign of things getting worse it's a sign of a healthy game where people are constantly striving to find the best way to tackle a metagame (thus, driving constant innovation and change).